Which PMI Agile Certification Should I Get in 2023?
With 5 PMI Agile Certifications to choose from, deciding which to pursue in 2023 can be hard. Get the background on each & decide which would be best for you.
Which Project Management Institute (PMI) Agile Certification should you get in 2023? Should you get the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) certification, or one of the newer Disciplined Agile Certifications? The short answer is “it depends.”
Prior to PMI’s acquisition of Disciplined Agile, people would ask me which entry-level agile certification they should get. Often the choice was between the PMI-ACP or a Scrum Master Certification like the PSM or CSM. Each of those has strengths and weaknesses to consider in view of your personal situation. You can read my recommendations here: Which Entry-Level Agile Certification Should I Get?
But this post is specific to the five PMI Agile Certifications. Let’s start by looking at all the PMI certifications and then focus on the five agile-specific PMI certifications.
PMI is in the Certification Business
Certifications drive PMI, going all the way back to the 1984 introduction of the Project Management Professional (PMP). Today there are 1.3M holders of the PMP. At roughly $500 per PMP, that is a minimum of $650M in PMI revenue generated from those current PMP holders.
But that isn’t all. The PMP needs to be renewed every 3 years, so the actual revenue from those certified PMPs is much higher for people that hold onto them for a while.
Consider my own experience. I first obtained my PMP in 1995 and renewed it every three years up until 2019. That is about 8 renewals at $60 each or $480. That makes for a total of $1,000 in revenue from me for the PMP over my career, and that seems like a lot just for the privilege of adding PMP to my business card. Not that anyone uses business cards anymore.
I had over 22 professional certifications in 2020. Since then, I wised up and stopped renewing my certifications that expire. My knowledge of the content did not expire; the only thing that expired was 3 years since my last payment.
The PMP is the cash cow for PMI. PMI’s attempts to introduce new certifications have not fared nearly as well. The chart below shows all the PMI certifications, sorted by the number of holders as of April 30, 2023.
The Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification
The PMP dominates the PMI certifications, with over 1.3 million people currently holding the credential. It is also the PMI certification that is showing the most growth, with a total of 90,091 new certificates from June 2022 to April 2023.
That is pretty good though it has been outpaced by Scrum Master certifications over the last few years. There are two main bodies that offer Scrum Certifications, Scrum.org and Scrum Alliance. Scrum.org publishes their statistics on certifications.
Scrum.org offers three different levels of Scrum Master certification (PSM-I, PSM-II, and PSM-III). For the year ending in April 2023, they added 108,788 new Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certifications for a total of 597, 161 scrum masters certified since 2009.
While the overall number of PMPs is greater than the PSMs, the PSM started later and is growing faster. And since Scrum.org is just one of the two main certification bodies for Scrum and Scrum Masters, it is fair to say that the Scrum Master certification is growing faster than the PMP certification.
The Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) Certification
The second most popular PMI certification is the CAPM. This is an entry-level PMP for those who lack the work experience to sit for the PMP. It is popular with recent college graduates heading into Project Management Careers.
The CAPM has been growing at about 11% per year. It is doing OK, but it will likely get bumped from 2nd place in 2026 by the PMI-ACP, which is growing at 16%.
Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) Certification
In third place is the Agile Certified Practitioner or PMI-ACP. The PMI-ACP was introduced in 2012. It covers agile ways of working and includes Scrum, Kanban, Lean SW development, and Extreme Programming. It is one of the only newer certifications to really take off.
In fact, there are nearly double the number of PMI-ACP holders than all the other certifications offered by PMI combined, excluding the PMP and CAPM. This is a bit ironic since PMI and Agile ways of working have been a little bit like oil and water.
Other PMI Certifications
Most of the other certifications offered by PMI are niche certifications related to the project management role. These include Risk Management, Program Management, Business Analysis, Scheduling, and Portfolio.
There is very little demand for these as shown in the table above. The few people that pursue these are typically hard-core project management types that want to get the complete set like they are Pokemon cards or something.
Then there are the Disciplined Agile Certifications which became available in 2020.
PMI Expanded the Agile Certification Offerings
With the PMI-ACP as the only real performing certification outside the PMP, PMI decided to push further into agile ways of working in 2019 by purchasing Disciplined Agile from the DA Consortium and co-founders Scott Ambler and Mark Lines.
It took PMI a while to digest the Disciplined Agile acquisition and refactor the certifications to fit with PMI’s approach. In my 2021 Update on the PMI Certifications, I described the 4 new DA certifications that PMI introduced:
- Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM)
- Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)
- Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC)
- Disciplined Agile Coach (DAC)
PMI didn’t share much about the demand for these certifications until January 2021, when they began to provide monthly updates via the PMI FACT FILE feature in their Critical Path Blog. Even then, they only published statistics for the DASM and DASSM. PMI did not provide any information about the Disciplined Agile Coach (DAC) and Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC) certifications until January of 2023.
The chart below shows the certification statistics as of the end of April 2023. I am not sure why PMI chooses to display them in a randomized sort order.
So how have the new Disciplined Agile Certifications from PMI fared? Not great.
The reception in the market has been lukewarm, with all 4 of the Disciplined Agile certifications gaining a total of 9,690 new certification holders since their introduction in 2020. That is paltry compared to the PMP and Scrum certifications and is even dwarfed by the PMI-ACP certification, which increased by nearly double that amount or 15,284 over the same time period.
Why are the PMI DA certifications so low? I can only speculate.
The fact that they are relatively new is certainly one factor.
Another factor could be the fact that PMI named two of their DA certifications “Scrum Master” even though that is a term from the Scrum Framework. It was a pretty weird choice, given that DA prides itself on being agnostic. And early on, the Disciplined Agile folks derided Scrum as being too prescriptive. In fact, the DA folks used to beat Scrum up pretty badly, when I took the DA training back in 2020.
So now we return to the original question — which PMI Agile Certification should I get?
How to Choose Between the PMI Agile Certifications
There are currently 5 choices for PMI Agile Certification. The chart below provides a comparison of the various aspects of each of these certifications.
These five PMI Agile Certifications are similar in these ways:
- That they are all offered by PMI.
- They are less prescriptive than some of the other agile certifications, like those from Scrum or SAFe.
- They are open and include coverage of Scrum as well as other agile methods like Lean Software Development, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban and scaling approaches like Scrum of Scrums and SAFe.
- They keep you in the PMI ecosystem.
- They all expire and need to be renewed.
These certifications do differ, though, as the table shows. Some of the key differences include:
- The DASM is the only PMI certification that does not require experience. The PMI-ACP, DASSM, DAC, and DAVSC all require experience. This may make them inaccessible to some people.
- For the PMI-ACP, students don’t need to take any training. They simply need to pass the exam. All the other PMI agile certifications require you to take training from a PMI Authorized Training Parther and pay for PMI Courseware. That courseware is standard, and all trainers are required to use the same exact course material without making changes.
- The knowledge base for each certification is different. For the PMI-ACP there are 13 reference books that serve as the basis for the exam content. For the DA certifications, the knowledge base is the Disciplined Agile Toolkit
- The DASM and DASSM include aspects of project lifecycles and phases that are not in the PMI-ACP.
- The DASM and DASSM provide a decision toolkit of practices along with guidance on what to apply to your context. The PMI-ACP does not provide that context and is more about understanding the full landscape of agile approaches.
- The PMI-ACP is somewhat recognized in agile circles, while the Disciplined Agile Certifications are still relatively unknown.
- The PMI-ACP is like the PMP in that it is renewed every three years, while the 4 Disciplined Agile certifications need to be renewed every year.
So, which PMI Agile Certification should you pursue?
- If you lack hands-on agile experience, then you won’t have a choice but to start with the DASM
- If you are experienced with agile and/or good at self-study, and want to save some money, you can pursue the PMI-ACP and do your own studying without having to pay for training. Mike Griffith has published a study guide for the PMI-ACP exam which I often recommend; Griffith also facilitates a PMI-ACP self-study group that costs significantly less than a typical training course.
- If you want to set yourself apart, the PMI-ACP does this better than the others (IMHO) since it is more widely recognized.
- If you have some agile experience and want to learn how to use a toolkit of possible approaches, then one of the Disciplined Agile Certifications would probably be helpful. I would start with the DASSM.
- If you already have been certified as a Scrum Master, I would recommend the PMI-ACP as it will expand your understanding of Lean, Kanban and other practices used outside Scrum.
- If you want access to a toolkit of good practices that you can apply to fit your context, then either the DASM or DASSM will be helpful.
- If you are experienced with agile and want to help organizations improve their alignment and understand the flow of value, then the Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant is probably your best bet.
- If you are PMP or operating in a project management organization, you will probably find the DASM certifications closer to the PMBOK approach taken by the PMP.
Another Way to Look at the Question of Which PMI Agile Certification
In a LinkedIn discussion from a few years ago, someone shared something that really made sense to me. While I often tend to think of a certification as a goal to be achieved, I was challenged to look at the attainment of a certification as a journey to be appreciated. More specifically, a journey of learning and growth.
By that, I was encouraged to consider pursuing whichever certification provided the most challenge, learning, and growth opportunities. The one that would make me the best trainer and coach that I could be. They convinced me to think less about the acronyms I would add to my profile but to my own development. It relates to Mastery which is one of the three factors that Dan Pink attributes to intrinsic motivation in his book Drive.
That is a very personal consideration.
Do you have firsthand experience with any of the certifications mentioned in this post? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Anthony Mersino is the founder of Vitality Chicago, an Agile Training and Coaching firm devoted to helping Teams THRIVE and Organizations TRANSFORM. He is also the author of two books, Agile Project Management, and Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers.